Slow Burn: Zero Day, Book 1

by Bobby Adair

  “Shit!” Maybe I shouldn’t have said that aloud. “Have either of you used a gun before?”

  The screamer nodded. The other shook her head.

  “It’s easy. Point and pull the trigger. But be careful and don’t shoot me.” I handed them each a pistol. “The safety is off.”

  “Let’s block the door,” the screamer said.

  D’oh! Good idea. “Is that desk bolted down?” I asked.

  “It moves,” the screamer told me.

  “Great. Help me get it to the door.”

  As fast as we could, we stacked the bulky desks in front of the door as it rattled in its frame.

  I leaned into the wooden desks, adding my strength to the weight. I felt each blow to the door as the wood conveyed the vibration of each fist blow and headlong rush. The girls found every heavy object in the room and stacked them in and on the desks, adding to the dead weight supporting the door against the assault.

  With everything moved, the screamer took a position beside me and leaned into the desk. “Will they go away?” she whispered.

  I nodded. I hoped.

  Chapter 27

  Over the course of an hour, the beating on the door dissipated, then ceased. The girls and I silently maintained our positions, holding the desks against the wall for a good while past when we heard the last of the noises disappear.

  Finally, we relaxed. I sat on the floor with my back to the desk. Each girl sat on a bed, exhausted, fearful, and hopeless.

  No words were spoken between us. The hour-long assault taught us the value of silence when we didn’t know how close the nearest ears might be.

  I reached into my pocket for the incessantly buzzing cell phone and handed it to one of the girls. Worried, the others had sent dozens of text messages. In the absence of a response, Felicity probably feared that her friends and I were dead. I’d leave it to the girls to sort it all out.

  One of the girls put a hand to her mouth and pantomimed drinking something from a bottle. She pointed at me with a question on her face.

  I looked around the room. There were empty water bottles and soda cans on the floor, but nothing that looked like it held any liquid. They didn’t have anything and I didn’t bring anything with me. My past life presumption on the ubiquity of clean water just got killed. I needed to stop learning things the hard way.

  I shook my head.

  One of the girls, the dark haired screamer, picked up a notepad and pen. She wrote on it and showed it to me.

  Amber.

  She pointed to herself.

  I nodded.

  She wrote another name and showed it to me and pointed to the blonde.

  Marcy.

  I nodded and smiled.

  Amber handed the pad and pen to me.

  I wrote my name and showed it to them. Didn’t they already know?

  Amber took the pad, drew a large question mark and showed it to me.

  I shrugged. She got a determined look on her face, but Marcy deflated and sagged against the wall. I thought she might cry.

  I closed my eyes and leaned my head down into my hands, resting my elbows on my knees.

  I needed to think.

  I heard the very faint taps on the screen of the cellphone as Amber communicated with the other group.

  The other dorm was probably three quarters of mile to a mile diagonally across campus. That distance was swarming with infected, all with apparently endless appetites and irritating persistence.

  Options again?

  Save my own ass and leave the girls? No.

  A car? No fucking way.

  The tunnels? A gamble with bad odds and no sure escape if things went sour.

  I was stuck ruminating on those three options. There had to be others.

  The last light of dusk faded slowly from the sky and another hour ticked past. Darkness and shadows from the streetlights were all I could see through the leaves of the oak trees outside the window. I thought about whether the darkness would offer us any advantage in an escape. I knew I couldn’t see any better in the dark, and I didn’t imagine the other infected could either. We all still had the same human physiology we’d had before the disease struck. They had diminished brain capacity. We all had less pigment and dilated pupils. Oh, and one other thing I was coming to suspect—sensations of pain seemed to be all but gone. I felt everything just as I had before, but things that should have hurt so much that I’d normally cry out in pain, didn’t. The painful part of sensation was gone. I’d need to ask Jerome about that.

  An idea came to me but I needed to risk a conversation with the girls.

  I scooted up on the floor and we all leaned in close together.

  I leaned forward and whispered, “So you guys texted Felicity, right?”

  Amber and Marcy nodded.

  “So you know the deal, then.” I looked at each until they nodded. “I have an idea to get us out of here so that we can join the others. Is that what you want to do?”

  Marcy nodded.

  Amber said, “If we stay here alone, it’s only a matter of time before…”

  She was right about that; the fate that she couldn’t bring herself to speak. They would both die.

  “I’ll be honest,” I said. “I don’t know that we’ll make it all the way across campus.”

  Mary asked, “You think we might get stuck somewhere?”

  “No, we might get killed.”

  “Killed?”

  “Yes.” I didn’t want to paint a rosy picture for them. They needed to know the honest reality in order to make their own choices. I didn’t want to carry the burden of a lie along with the burden of their deaths, if it came to that. “I think there’s very little chance that you’ll make it there alive.”

  “But we have guns,” Marcy countered.

  “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “There are too many of them. If we have to shoot, we’ll kill a few, but every infected on campus will come running. There are thousands.”

  Marcy deflated and stared down at the nearly useless pistol. Fifteen rounds in a Glock would do little more than delay your death with a hundred infected coming at you. Guns were no solution when dealing with the infected. They were a means to buy time and distance. Those were the things that could save your life. Guns bought time. Time bought distance. The only way for a normal not to get killed by the infected was to not be near them.

  Amber asked, “If we stay, how long do you think it’ll be before someone comes to rescue us?”

  I shook my head, “I don’t know. You probably know better than me. All I know is what Wilkins told me. I haven’t seen any news since, like, Saturday.”

  Marcy hissed, “Amber, nobody’s coming. You’ve seen the news.” She dismissively pointed at me. “This is it.”

  “Thanks.” Bitch.

  Marcy interpreted my tone. “I didn’t mean it like that.”

  I shrugged. “Yeah, whatever.”

  Amber stepped in, “She didn’t mean it like that, Zed. We’ve just been stuck in here for two days. We look out the window and we see what’s going on. We’ve been online; we know what’s going on everywhere. Marcy hasn’t been able to get her parents on the phone since Monday. My dad tried to drive in from Lubbock to get me, but he can’t get past the roadblocks around Abilene. We’ve lost our friends. We’re tired. We’re hungry. We’re thirsty, and we’re scared.” Tears filled her eyes.

  I looked down at the floor. I felt bad. I wasn’t emotionally attached to the ones I’d lost, and as long as my temperature didn’t continue to rise, at least I had a good chance at remaining alive. For the girls, however, the losses were real, and death loomed large.

  “Look, I don’t mean to be a dick,” I said. “It just kind of happens by itself. Marcy, can you pop open your laptop and pull up a campus map? I have an idea that might work. It might take us all night to get to the other side of campus, but if we’re careful, I think it can work.”

  With the map in front of us, I explained my plan and was rewa
rded with a tiny spark of hope in their eyes. I told them to pack up their backpacks.

  Marcy said, “I don’t even know what to take.”

  “Whatever you’ll need for the rest of your life,” I told them with a straight face, then smiled.

  Marcy smiled and rolled her eyes. Amber suppressed a laugh.

  In a tense situation, any joke will do.

  “I don’t know anything about all this end of the world stuff, but if I were you, I’d wear the most rugged shoes I could find. Wear some jeans. Bring some socks and undies, maybe an extra shirt. Bring your computer and charger if you want. Don’t bring more than you can run with. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in the last few days, it’s that you’ll have to run.”

  “Why do we need our computers?” Amber asked.

  “As long as we have electricity and an internet connection, they’ll come in real handy.”

  Both girls nodded.

  “Okay, let’s get these desks moved as quietly as possible.”

  Moving everything quietly took a while. When we finished, I very slowly opened the door and peeked out. The hall was empty. I looked to the girls for final confirmation. They nodded.

  I headed to the north end of the building. The girls closed the door behind.

  I walked as quietly as I could up the hall. I heard no sounds from any lingering infected but every shadow I passed made me nervous.

  At the end of the hall, I slipped into the stairwell and stopped on the landing to listen. No sound came up from below.

  I made my way down to the first floor and out into the hall. Just outside the stairwell, the girls told me there was a public restroom. I entered and closed door silently behind me. I methodically checked each stall to ensure it was empty. The window on the exterior wall had been replaced by translucent glass block. That was good.

  On the way out, I checked the door, and indeed, there was a deadbolt lock that could be set from the inside. That was a piece of luck. I closed the door and went back upstairs. From the hall, I texted the girls. A moment later, they opened up the door and let me in.

  “The bathroom at the bottom of the stairs is clear. The way there is clear. If we go quietly, we can make it.”

  Amber nodded. Marcy’s fear was getting the best of her. She stared through me.

  “If you want to back out, now is the time.”

  “No, we need to go,” said Amber. “It’s our only chance.”

  “Okay,” I said. “Remember—quiet.”

  It took several tense minutes, but we made it down the hall, down the stairs, and into the restroom. I locked the door as we stepped in, then rechecked each stall to ensure that it hadn’t become occupied during my short absence.

  “Okay,” I whispered to the girls. “Are we good?”

  Moving was doing Marcy good. Amber nervously smiled.

  “The entrance to the Bio-Chem building is just across the street from the door at the bottom of the stairwell. I’m going to head across and find us a room there on the first floor. I’ll be back. Keep the door locked while I’m gone. If the infected come, remember, stay quiet. Keep the door shut. I’ll find a place to hide close by until they wander off. If all goes to shit, then I’ll just shoot them all and we’ll run back up the room and hope for the best.”

  Amber said, “Go ahead. We’re good.”

  “Yes,” Marcy agreed.

  I left the restroom and crept out across the street and into the Bio-Chem building. I found our next leap-frog room there on the second floor, just a short distance inside the building. The first floor wasn’t an option. Many infected were silently squatting in the hall up at the other end of the building.

  In that fashion, we very slowly worked our way across campus, staying mostly inside, sometimes traversing the length of a building on the first floor, sometimes on the second, and sometimes on the third or fourth.

  Thankfully, the school was in a summer session. During the regular semester, there would have been ten times as many students around, hence ten times as many infected in the buildings. As it was, I suspected that many of the infected outdoors had wandered onto the campus from the surrounding city.

  It took hours, but we arrived at the last outdoor space we had to cross—the street near where Felicity had run earlier that day. Unlike Felicity’s crossing, ours was uneventful. The door on the western end of the dormitory opened as we approached.

  We’d made it.

  Chapter 28

  I stirred when the sun came up and the room got warm, but I pulled my pillow up over my head and extended the darkness.

  Later in the morning, voices crept through, but I kept my eyes closed tight and sleep came again.

  When I finally did roll over and surrender to the strident sunshine, it was close to ten in the morning. I was alone in the room. I stared at the bunk above me, listening to the morning sounds coming in through the windows and thinking about the previous day’s events. The breeze disturbed the window blinds. Grackles annoyed one another in the branches of the ancient oaks. A squirrel chattered a warning. Occasional gunshots in the background were starting to seem ordinary.

  The door opened and I tilted my head to see Jerome come into the room. He looked worried.

  “Hey,” I said.

  “You’re up?”

  He came over and sat in the desk chair nearest my bunk. He took a long look out the window at nothing, then said, “The ROTC guys don’t like me.”

  “Jerome, I don’t think junior high social concerns are at the top of the list of things we have to worry about.”

  “You say that now, but they don’t like you either.”

  “Big deal.” I rolled over on my side then sat up.

  “Zed, they’re afraid of us. That Mark guy said we’re an abomination in the face of God.”

  That took me by surprise. “Did God tell him that?”

  Jerome ignored that. “They think that because we’re infected, that we’re a danger to them.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense. Did you tell them that they didn’t have to worry?”

  “Of course, I did.”

  “And they didn’t believe you?”

  Jerome shook his head.

  “Why not? You’re from the CDC, if anybody knows what’s going on, it’s you.”

  Jerome stared at the floor. “Yeah, well, that’s just it.”

  “What’s just it?” I asked.

  More staring. More waiting. “You’re going to find out soon enough, so I might as well tell you.”

  “Okay,” I prompted.

  “All that stuff I told you about the infection—I learned most of that on the internet.”

  I swung my feet onto the floor and leaned forward, my interest piqued. “So, are you saying that the CDC didn’t send you to Africa?”

  Jerome shook his head.

  “So, you didn’t have any real experience with the infection when the CDC sent you to Austin.”

  Jerome took a moment to respond. “The CDC didn’t send me to Austin.”

  “So what, you just left Atlanta and came here on your own?”

  “Zed, I’ve never been to Atlanta.”

  “What? What are you saying, Jerome?”

  “Zed,” Jerome sighed and looked out the window. “I don’t work for the CDC.”

  I was taken aback. “But…”

  “I own a sub shop over on Guadalupe Street.”

  “You own a sub shop across the street from campus?”

  Jerome nodded.

  My temper flared. I wanted to punch him in the face. I wanted to punch him in the face a bunch of times. I jumped up from the bed and he flinched away. I paced around the room and drew several angry breaths. “Why are you telling me this now, Jerome? I already bought your line of bullshit about the CDC.”

  Jerome stared out the window but didn’t answer.

  “Well?” I prodded.

  “Because those ROTC guys—Tom and Mark—they used to come into my shop all the time. They recognized m
e.”

  “So, you’re just a lying pussy. That’s the bottom line here, right? You made up all that shit so that I’d get you out of the gym, so I’d take all the risks while you sat up here in the room all safe and sissy-like, too valuable to go outside.”

  “It’s not like that.”

  My fists were clenched. My voice was harsh. “I don’t see how it couldn’t be like that. But hey, why don’t you fuckin’ tell me what it’s like, Jerome?”

  Jerome didn’t.

  “Well?” I demanded.

  No reply.

  “You fucker,” I muttered. I grabbed a warm can of soda and a package of plastic-wrapped something-or-other off of the stack on the desk and headed for the door.

  In a weak voice, Jerome said, “Zed, I’m sorry.”

  I ignored him and slammed the door shut on my way out of the room.

  Wilkins was coming up the hall just in front of me. “Mad?” he asked.

  “God damn Jerome,” I groused.

  “I guess you found out he’s not with the CDC.”

  “Yep.” I stomped down the hall. Jerome had literally sent me out among the infected, based on something he’d read on the internet. What really bothered me though, was the question of my prognosis. Was I going to turn? Was I going to become a mindless zombie, squatting in the shadows until a normal with a gun puts me down?

  I stomped into the common area with a scowl on my face. Murphy was sitting on a couch, chatting up Amber and Felicity, back to his loquacious self. The only difference from the time I first saw him was that he was a much paler brown than before.

  “Thank you, thank you so much,” Amber told me as I walked up. “You saved our lives.”

  I shrugged. It wasn’t nothing, but what else was I going to do? “Anybody would have done it.”

  “Not Jerome,” said Felicity.

  Murphy laughed heartily at that. “Man, I would have come with, but I was passed out from the infection.”

  “Yeah,” I agreed and sat down on the couch. I opened my tiny donuts and cola. “Where is everybody?”

  “They’re downstairs, fortifying the windows, I think,” Felicity said.

  “With what?” I asked.

  “I don’t know,” she answered.